Sunday, September 25, 2016

Homemade X-Rays From A Vacuum Tube



Homemade X-Rays From A Vacuum Tube



In the electromagnetic spectrum, X-rays are between ultraviolet and gamma waves, but there is some overlap between the x-rays and gamma waves. Simply speaking, the difference between X-rays and gamma rays is that: 

Gamma radiation is produced by nuclear decay of radioactive atoms.

X-rays are produced by electrons banging into metal.

Except for their source, there is basically no defined difference between the two. They're just photons, like all electromagnetic phenomena. Photons have no mass and no charge. They are light itself. I've played with gamma radiation already using my mineral collection. To experiment with x-rays I had to make them myself. So I did! 


How did I do it? Easy! 
I found an old vacuum tube with a metal cap on top.
I took a multimeter set to Ohms and touched the probes to each pin. The two pins that gave any reading were the heater pins.
I took the output wires from my high voltage source and connected one to the metal cap and the other to one of the heater pins.
Turn on the power to over 20, 000 volts and a purple glow inside the tube made my Geiger counter go wild! 
My power source was a $9 3.6v-6v to 400, 000 volt boost step up power module high voltage generator from Amazon. I could have fed it with two AA batteries, but i just used the Elenco power supply I built to give it 6v DC input.
The tube was $1 at a local antique shop. I have a bunch and only one produced a lot of x-rays. The first one in the video was actually the only other one to produce x_rays, although rather weakly.

Instead of a power source to power the step-up boost transformer, two AA batteries would work fine. I used it to give 0-6 volts DC input into the boost transformer at up to 1 amp. Then I used the 3 amp outputs and the purple glow inside the vacuum tube grew intense, but so did the internal sparks and noise so I don't recommend it.

Here is the setup:



Here's the spark gap without the vacuum tube in between the wires.


I have a photographic darkroom, so I'll eventually get around to x-raying things on top of film plates and developing them. 

About the metal cap at the top of my tubes:

The metal top cap connects to one of the electrodes, the other electrodes being connected to the tube’s base pins. There are a few uses for the metal top cap seen on some vacuum tubes: sometimes it’s used as the anode, which means it’s more robust and can handle higher voltage. They run the highest voltage through the metal cap so it’s isolated this way. 

They also do the exact opposite: sometimes a very low signal was sent through the metal cap for control grids. 

So, either the metal cap can be the HIGHEST most dangerous voltage-or the LOWEST safest voltage that you may actually need to test

It’s a real gamble. You might fry your meter or even get electrocuted. For my uses I ASSUME that the metal cap is the anode and blast it with high voltage to produce x-rays. I touch NOTHING and if the tube blows I don’t really care. In my case my meter makes no physical contact since it’s a Geiger counter. Back in the “good old days” you could tap your finger on the metal grid control cap and hear it on sound equipment…of course if that control cap turned out to be hooked to the anode you wouldn’t have a finger left. ZAP!



Above is a video of my newest tube: the infamous 2x2 which gives off massive amounts of x-rays. It doesn't seem this matter which pin I fed the high voltage to, the result was lots of x-rays.

Friday, September 23, 2016

Can't Delete Photos from Gallery in Android?



Can't Delete Photos from Gallery in Android?

Here's a quick rundown of what FINALLY worked!


Do have photos/albums showing up on your android phone or tablet that you can't delete? You click on them but "delete" doesn't show as an option like your other photos? Does the album have a little Picasa emblem (rainbow color wheel) instead of a folder emblem and have a name like "Auto Backup", "Blogger Pictures", "Profile Photos"?



Get onto a DESKTOP computer (mobile app version sometimes doesn't work) > login to your google account (or login to gmail) > click picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1 and edit away!

If you have your devices synched to your google account (which is what causes these photos to show up) then you may have photos in: this Picasa web storage; google Drive, google photos app; on your device's main storage card; your devices add-on memory card; google+; etc.

If you delete photos from here they will be wiped out EVERYWHERE: from your synced phones, tablets, computers, your BLOGGER posts, google photo app, android gallery/photo gallery app, etc. So be careful!

This is what worked when unsyncing > clear gallery cache > turn sync back on = the photos disappearing for 5 minutes and then showing back up.

Here's that trick in case you want to try it:

Settings > Application Manager > ALL > Gallery > Clear Cache.

Settings > Accounts > Google > Tap on your gmail > uncheck what you don't want synced to all your devices (Picasa Web Albums).

You can leave sync off, but then your photos won't show up on all your devices. BETTER YET: click on the link at the start of this post and edit there from a DESKTOP computer that's logged into your gmail.

Another thing that can grab and save photos/data is: Settings > Personal > Backup and reset. On all my devices this is set to save info to "Google Servers". It's actually a great feature, but all these places can be the actual location of a certain photo you want to delete, in this case a photo of a cat.




After a week of trying the cat photo is GONE from about 8 different locations/devices: including google+ which the user never signed up for but was included in the "google account". If you have gmail, then you may have all sorts of google app accounts that you never actually signed up for-they're just tacked onto your gmail now.

WARNING:

Hope this helps someone else, but remember that deleting a photo ANYWHERE in google deletes it EVERYWHERE!
SUMMARY
Eventually they might show back up. Here's another route to take: delete the photos from the FOLDER that feeds the un-deletable Picasa albums. Get on a desktop computer > sign into google account > click picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos?noredirect=1 and delete the actual photos. It will give a huge list of the places that the photo is being deleted from! THEN go to settings > Accounts > Google > click on your gmail address which shows up > make sure "Sync Picasa Web Album" is CHECKED > click SYNC! THEN settings > Application Manager > ALL > Gallery > clear cache. If you don't they'll just eventually reappear. This way you can also KEEP your sync and backups going, just delete the individual photos you find annoying. This worked for a TON of my photos, but there is still one that keeps coming back, but that's better than the 305 that kept showing up!



You ain't gonna get rid of me that easy!


When I long press that 1 photo it doesn't show the details>location like the others so I have no idea where it is coming from...and yes, it's another cat photo.